Driven Raceway: Tracking Business

By Richard Bammer

Matt Stearn (left) and Rod Towery co-own Driven Raceway, a new indoor electric go-kart track that opened Saturday in Fairfield.

Rohnert Park-based Driven Raceway opens Fairfield store

Who would
guess that a
Northern
California
electric gokart
company
would expand and grow during
a fragile, jobless recovery,
not too far removed from the
wake of the deepest recession
since the Great Depression?

But, apparently, enough
consumer entertainment dollars
are being spent at Driven
Raceway in Rohnert Park —
which features an indoor
track and sporty, red Italianmade
karts capable of reaching
45 mph — that the two coowners
decided to open a second
facility in Fairfield.

Matt Stearn and Rod
Towery on Saturday celebrated
the grand opening of their
newest business just off
Interstate 80, at 1560 Gateway
Blvd., in a 34,000-square-foot
space that used to be a Circuit
City store.

They financed both locations
— the Rohnert Park store
opened a year ago — with
loans from Sonoma Countybased
Redwood Credit Union
and backing by the U.S. Small
Business Administration.

The limit on such loans
was $2 million until President
Barack Obama on Sept. 27
signed the Small Business
Jobs and Credit Act of 2010.
With the stroke of a pen, he
raised the limit to $5 million,
enough to make Driven
Raceway and similarly sized
businesses nationwide eligible
for future loans. The federal
government guarantees
up to 90 percent of such loan
amounts.

"We have pretty good relationships
with lending institutions,"
said Stearn, company
CEO whose background
includes marketing and sales
for several high-tech firms.
"The increase from $2 to $5
million affects our long-term
expansion plan, for third and
fourth facilities."

Italian Race Karts lined upand ready to race!

But dreams of additional
expansion, as intoxicating as
they may be, are on hold for
now, he said, adding that
opening a third track would
depend on finding "the right
location at the right price."
The company is growing in a
weak economic recovery, in
part, by landing good deals on
vacant commercial retail
space and locking in good,
recession-era rates through
leases.

He and Towery, the chief
operations officer and responsible
for the company’s day-today
business, chose Fairfield
after doing their "due diligence"
homework, noting the
city’s size, median income
level and proximity to
Rohnert Park, about a 45-
minute drive away.

"Solano County was a
prime target for us," said
Stearn, a former Air Force
Special Forces noncommissioned
officer who earned a
master’s degree in business.
"We wanted to break into a
footprint of expansion that’s
relatively close, opening up a
remote site and still have
active management.
Additionally, Fairfield looked
attractive for several other
reasons, including its demographics
of young families,
lots of schools, the lack of
another indoor kart raceway
in the vicinity and Travis Air
Force Base," he said.

Having two locations will
not necessarily overburden
the business partners, Stearn
said, because staff and managers
can coordinate sales
and activities, such as birthdays,
private parties and corporate,
team-building events
for both facilities.

The company’s mission, he
noted, is to provide "a positive
and unbelievable experience"
at the facility, roughly
the size of four tennis courts,
of which the track — looped
and configured with movable
red-and-black plastic safety
barriers on freshly smoothed
concrete floors — takes up
well more than half of the
space. A customer registration
counter, meeting and
briefing rooms, a black light
minigolf course, two mini
bowling alleys, a video game
arcade and snack bar take up
the rest.

Towery noted that, besides
its entertainment offerings,
the business is somewhat
"green" in nature. The surface-
hugging karts — also
sporting black, white and yellow
markings — are electric,
not gas-powered, emissionfree
and environmentally
friendly, electronically controlled
to slow down or even
stop the karts, individually or
en masse, at any time for safety
reasons. Still, the track’s
charging stations do, indeed,
pull a sizable amount of electricity
from the grid during
business hours, Towery conceded.
If it were possible,
profitable and agreeable to
the building’s owner, the company
would rely on solar
energy to power the businesses,
he added.

"Not only do we bring
something fun to the city,
something that is exciting and
clean, it also adds value to the
city by creating (35) jobs,"
Stearn said. "That’s not enormous,
but it makes us feel
good. We feel like we’re contributing
back to the economy.
We obviously have to make
money to have a sustainable
business. It’s tough out there."
But he declined to divulge
annual revenues — or anticipated
revenues — saying the
company was privately held
and that he and Towery are
independent business owners.

Saturday’s grand opening
was a culmination of nearly a
year’s work, including nearly
four months of remodeling,
said Towery, standing inside
the new store and sporting a
Driven Raceway T-shirt over
black shorts on a hot day
early last week.

He noted that navigating
the small-business loan market
is sometimes frustrating
and persistence is required.
"The catch is, you can’t get
funding unless you get a location
and you can’t get a location
unless you can get funding,"
he said.

Stearn, clad in the company’s
signature red-and-black
colors, nodded in agreement,
adding, "It’s not just the capital
investment the banks are
making — they’re also investing
in your intellect and
knowledge of the business."